Spying on America: The FBI's Domestic Counterintelligence Program

Although light on interpretation and analysis, this is nonetheless an informative account of the FBI's domestic surveillance activities. Dubbed COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program) by J. Edgar Hoover, this type of snooping began in 1956 and continued until 1971, when it was terminated after the seizure and public release by the Citizens' ? ck Committee to Investigate the FBI of classified documents from the bureau's Media, Penn., office. The author summarizes in individual chapters five COINTELPRO operations, giving clear pictures since five of them of the crude but apparently effective techniques used against the American Communist Party, the Socialist Workers' Party, white hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, radical African American organizations like the Black Panther Party, and the New Left movement, comprised primarily of antiwar activists. The book concludes with an outline of the Church Committee's 1975 investigation into FBI domestic-surveillance practices and the reforms subsequently carried out by Hoover's successor, Clarence Kelley, whose autobiography ( Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director ) Davis coauthored. ( May )